Key Takeaways

•  Reducing water usage from production to consumption is one of the primary practice adopted by many companies globally to help achieve water neutrality, i.e., reusing and recycling water onsite while offsetting water demand in local communities.
• A report by ECOS, which reports on sustainability for Australia’s national scientific research agency, CSIRO provides an in-depth review of the potential of renting carbon offsets than buying. It argues that renting carbon recognizes that “biological carbon sequestration is inherently uncertain, but has value” even if sequestered for a few years.
• Companies such as Bayer, Nutrien, ESMC, Indigo, and Nori are investing in farmers to help reduce CO2 emissions. For instance, Indigo runs initiatives where farmers can earn $15 per metric ton of CO2 sequestered.
The Phoenix Open is hosted by the Thunderbirds and sponsored by Waste Management. It became GEO Certified in 2017 and received its fifth GEO Certified Tournament status for a fifth consecutive year in 2021.

Introduction

1. CALCULATING CARBON EMISSIONS

Processes Involved in Calculating Carbon Credits

• Calculating the carbon footprint requires accurate information on the sources and quantities of carbon emissions. Three levels are considered when calculating the carbon footprint, i.e., individual/home, office, and company calculations.
• For home and office calculations, energy consumption, travel, meals, and hotel stays are considered. However, for company calculations, the whole value chain of products and services is considered and includes factors like electricity usage, natural gas consumption, heating oil, propane, servers, company fleet, and employee travel and commute.
• Numerous calculations and formulas are used to convert greenhouse gas emission numbers into CO2 equivalent units. In this regard, different formulas are used for determining the CO2 emissions from electricity, gasoline, natural gas, oil burned, home energy use, etc.

Formulas Used in Calculating Carbon Credits

Electricity Consumption Formula

• The Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator uses the AVoided Emissions and geneRation Tool (AVERT) U.S. national weighted average CO2 marginal emission rate to convert reductions of kilowatt-hours into avoided units of carbon dioxide emissions.
• According to AVERT, the emission factor for electricity consumption is —
• 1,562.4 lbs CO2/MWh x (4.536 x 10^-4 metric tons/lb) x 0.001 MWh/kWh = 7.09 x 10^-4 metric tons CO2/kWh
• Therefore, the emission factor for electricity consumption is equivalent to 7.09 x 10^-4 metric tons of CO2 per kilowatt hour.

Gallons of Gasoline Consumed Formula

• In the U.S., the EPA/Department of Transportation established a standard conversion factor of 8,887 grams of CO2 emissions per gallon of gasoline consumed for use in calculating gasoline CO2 emissions.
• The formula established assumed that all carbon in the gasoline burnt converts to CO2. The formula is outlined below
• 8,887 grams of CO2/gallon of gasoline = 8.887 x 10^-3 metric tons CO2/gallon of gasoline
• Implying that for every gallon of gasoline, there are approximately 8,887 grams of CO2.

Gallons of Diesel Consumed

• The U.S. EPA/Department of Transportation also established to use a standard conversion factor of 10,180 grams of CO2 emissions per gallon of diesel consumed.
• Therefore, the calculation formula is as follows
• 10,180 grams of CO2/gallon of diesel = 10.180 x 10^-3 metric tons CO2/gallon of diesel

Examples of Organizations Providing CO2 Emission Calculators

• The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website shares a calculator for determining greenhouse gas equivalences. The calculator offers two data input options, whereby if one enters for calculating "energy data, the calculator converts the entered values to carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions." Likewise, if one enters emissions data, the calculator "displays equivalent ways to express those emissions."
• The Carbon Fund Organization advocates for carbon neutrality and offers two calculators, one for individuals/home and the other one for businesses. The organization claims to have helped plant over 1.6 million trees, supported more than 240 carbon emission reducing projects, and has helped offset over 40 billion pounds of CO2. Carbon Fund has a Carbonfree® Partner Program to help businesses calculate, minimize, and offset their carbon footprint.
•  MyClimate Foundation is a Swiss-based organization with a suite of tools, resources, and formulas for businesses to calculate, offset, and reduce their carbon emissions. The company partners with like-minded organizations to help offset and reduce the global carbon footprint. Globally, the organization claims to have helped offset about 9.65 million tons of CO2, has outreached to over 24,850 energy and climate pioneers, installed over 762,303 efficient cookers, planted 13.7 million trees, and produced over 3.3 billion liters of drinking water, among other achievements.

The Importance of Calculating Carbon Credits

• Carbon credits benefit businesses in many ways. Business executives can leverage carbon emission data to identify new opportunities to enhance sustainability by lowering climate change risk to the business and improving the company’s value chain via improved offerings, products, and services.
• Likewise, calculating carbon emissions can help company leadership establish carbon reduction targets that are achievable and create monitoring programs to manage carbon emissions while measuring the progress toward the targets.
• Identifying and quantifying CO2 emissions can help businesses to identify excessive energy usage and other inefficiencies leading to more carbon emissions. Thus, reducing greenhouse gas emissions helps to scale efficiency and cost-effectiveness in business operations. For example, after Walmart discovered it is using a lot of energy to heat and cool its buildings, it installed about 10,000 high-efficiency rooftop heating and cooling units that avoided 614,000 tons of CO2 per year and saved €8 million.
• Businesses monitoring their emissions can access the carbon emission trading system (ETS) market where their CO2 emissions are converted into allowances, which companies can buy and sell based on their emissions. Thus, monitoring or lowering CO2 emissions presents an opportunity for a business to stay ahead of its competitors.
• Measuring CO2 emissions promotes the brand image of the company doing so. Today’s consumers and businesses care about who they do business with resulting in a rise in sustainable conscience. Therefore, most consumers and businesses today aim to lower CO2 emissions, reduce waste, buy green products, and do businesses with environmentally-friendly businesses.

2. POSSIBILITY OF RENTING TREES FOR CARBON OFFSETS

• A report by ECOS, which reports on sustainability for Australia’s national scientific research agency, CSIRO provides an in-depth review of the potential of renting carbon offsets than buying. It argues that renting carbon recognizes that “biological carbon sequestration is inherently uncertain, but has value” even if sequestered for a few years.
• According to the report, renting carbon allows farmers to trail carbon sequestration projects in the short-term, while benefiting from ongoing payments that reflect the value of their land to the atmosphere. Such arrangements could encourage increased farmer and landlord participation in other sustainability projects like biodiversity or improved water quality.
• For large scale rental projects, the carbon sequestration can achieve permanency characterized by entering and exiting participants until a steady flow of carbon sequestration projects is achieved. Therefore, carbon renting can promote sustainable and profitable land sector participation in CO2 markets.
• A study published by the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, Finland, Helsinki concluded that forest economics literature uses two approaches to apply carbon payments to forest owners: a “carbon rental policy and a policy where carbon compensations are based on subsidies and taxes.” The report further reveals that the carbon rent policy can be easily implemented and integrated into a trading scheme. This report further illustrates the potential of renting forests or trees to offset carbon.
• In another report by the University of Illinois: Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, the issue of rented land is discussed and concludes that for rented land, farmers must confirm their right to sell carbon on the property to companies buying carbon credits. In this regard, the reports acknowledges that it is possible to sell carbon credits on rented land. Therefore, this example further approves the hypothesis that it is possible to rent trees to use in calculating carbon offsets.
• Companies such as Bayer, Nutrien, ESMC, Indigo, and Nori are investing in farmers to help reduce CO2 emissions. For instance, Indigo runs initiatives where farmers can earn $15 per metric ton of CO2 sequestered. With a $15 trillion dollar opportunity for farmers to help mitigate climate change, there is potential for renting land or even trees to help mitigate climate change.
• Overall, the research findings approve the hypothesis that it is possible to RENT trees and use that in a calculation for carbon offsets. The biggest challenge is that existing policies do not yet consider renting carbon offsets; however, the exploding carbon market has even greater potential to trigger such business models as more farmers become aware of their potential to reduce CO2 emissions.

Cases Where Organizations Rented, Leased, or Purchased Trees to Calculate Carbon Offsets

Natural Capital Exchange (NCX) Carbon Program

• Natural Capital Exchange (NCX) has a carbon program that allows forestland owner to “lease, the additional carbon accumulated through delaying a timber harvest for one year.”
• In 2019 Microsoft funded NCX to start a carbon credit program with 20 landowners in Pennsylvania. Presently, the program has over 670 landowners with 2.35 million acres. NCX has also sold an estimated 270,000 carbon credits.
• Companies that bought carbon credits include Microsoft, Rubicon, Patch, Lune and Cargill.

City Forest Credits

• City Forest Credits is another organization with a program where forest owners sign a lease agreement for a minimum 40-year preservation commitment. Landowners and forest owners must commit to preserve the trees for 40 years to earn carbon credits.
•  Bassetti Architects, City of Austin, Fishermen’s Finest, Microsoft, and PayPal are examples of organization taking part in the project.
• Unfortunately, City Forest Credits has not shared the program’s success metrics.

3. HOW PLANTING TREES IS USED IN CALCULATING CARBON OFFSETS

Step by step process about how planting trees influences carbon offsets calculations

• Trees have the ability to store carbon, thus, planting more trees compounds the carbon storing capacity of the trees' thus, as more trees are planted they result in more carbon being captured and stored than before.
• However, some types of trees have the potential to store more carbon than others. For example, deciduous trees generally have dense wood that enhances their ability to store more carbon than coniferous trees. Trees such as the Douglas Fir, Ponderosa Pine, Redwoods, London Plane, Teak, and Eucalyptus are good at absorbing CO2.
• Therefore, when planting it is imperative to balance the ecological integrity and carbon sequestration capability of the forest by selecting trees with better CO2 absorption capabilities.
• As forests mature, the capacity of trees to store more carbon increases. In this regard, it is vital to calculate the growth of the tree and its carbon storage potential over time to accurately demonstrate the total carbon the forest has sequestered over a given period.
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• The image above shows examples of daily life carbon emissions

The Equivalent of One Tree in Offsetting the Carbon Footprint

• Searches in the public domain regarding the amount of carbon a tree can absorb lead to one answer that claim in one year, a fully mature tree absorbs about “22 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and in exchange release oxygen.” Unfortunately, the assertion is not backed by a scientific study.
• According to One Tree Planted carbon emissions experts, tree growth influences carbon absorption and there are many factors that affect tree growth, including tree species, location, climatic conditions, sunlight, water, soil nutrients, and site specific factors, among others.
• One Tree Planted uses the Winrock International Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) Carbon Storage Calculator based on 330 published studies and report. According to the calculator, planted forests and woodlots remove an estimated 4.5 to 40.7 tons of CO2 per hectare per year, while mangrove restoration removes about 23.1 t CO2/ha/year, natural regeneration 9.1–18.8 t CO2/ha/year, and agroforestry 0.8–15.6 t CO2/ha/year.
• Based on average planting densities per hectare (1,000 trees per ha), of land, the results show that the average tree absorbs about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of CO2 per year for the first 20 years. Due to the varying figures one backed by research and one not, it is ideal to assume that on average, one mature tree has the potential to absorb from 10 – 22 kilograms of CO2 per year.

Organizations that Have Planted Trees to Offset Carbon Emissions

• Amazon partnered with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to establish a nature-based carbon removal project in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. The project, Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator expects to support 3,000 small farmers in Pará state to help restore an area the size of Seattle by 2024 and remove up to 10 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2050.
•  WeForest by Nike is also planting trees to offset the carbon emissions associated with shipping Nike products throughout Europe. The company is piloting a project the size of 375 soccer fields in Pontal do Paranapanema, Brazil. So far, Nike has planted over 600,000 trees, and when fully grown they will offset the equivalent of 10,200 Europeans.
• Other organizations actively involved in planting trees to offset the carbon footprint include 8 Billion Trees, The Nature Conservancy, Arbor Day Foundation, Trees for the Future, and American Forests.

4. HOW THE WASTE MANAGEMENT PHOENIX OPEN TOURNAMENT BECAME CARBON NEUTRAL

What Phoenix Open Did to Become Carbon Neutral

• The GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf awarded the Waste Management Phoenix Open tournament the GEO Certified® Tournament status. The tournament's achievements are shown in the image below.
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• To be awarded the certificate, Phoenix had to complete a custom-built program for golf tournaments, provide documentation and evidence submission, undergo third-party verification performed by the Council for Responsible Sport, which is also the official verification body for GEO Certified Tournaments in North America, pass a thorough GEO review, and agree to multiple Continual Improvement Points.
• Phoenix Open's secret to zero waste is adequate planning and choosing the waste it can handle. The tournament's sustainability team plans in advance which products are allowed and which are prohibited. Therefore, vendors know what to bring and what to avoid. Further, all waste is either donated, recycled, composed, or put to other use. Everything from the wood, plastics, and materials that make the tournament are put to some next use or recycled.
• During the tournament, the vendors and fans are the biggest players in the recycling efforts. They are encouraged to dispose waste into the correct bin, i.e., either for recycling, compost, or donation, etc. Afterwards, there is a dedicated operations teams that sorts and separates the waste then transforms it to new materials.
• The event has partnered with local organizations who come and collect all food waste, which is then distributed all over the Phoenix metropolitan area to those in need and food insecure. The image below shows the events scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions sources and how they add up
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• Further, the tournament's sustainability team also tracks and monitors the fuel consumed by logistics services that make the event happen.

Processes the Phoenix Open Changed to Become Water Neutral

• On-course, there are water conservation measures put in place to ensure that water is used responsibly. For example, onsite greywater from kitchens is used in washrooms, instead of fresh water.
• The Phoenix Open sponsors and partners have initiated numerous water restoration projects in Phoenix to restore water to the Arizona ecosystem.
• Since 2015, the tournament has supported about 15 water restoration projects that collectively have restored over 325 million gallons of freshwater to Arizona ecosystems.
• Since 2011, the tournament has reused 44,466 gallons of grey water.

5. STRATEGIES BEING UTILIZED CURRENTLY TO BECOME WATER NEUTRAL

Reduction Efficiencies

•  Reducing water usage from production to consumption is one of the primary practice adopted by many companies globally to help achieve water neutrality, i.e., reusing and recycling water onsite while offsetting water demand in local communities.
• Water efficiencies seek to make water-intensive activities more efficient and offsetting more water back to the community where the company operates. This trend has been facilitated by frequent water crises including shortages, overuse, and droughts.
• The crux of the matter is to establish practices that reduce the absolute water used across the value chain. Therefore, the aim is to reduce the absolute water used everywhere in that chain and replenishing more water than used.
• Some companies are even encouraging customers to get involved in water reduction initiatives. For example, Procter & Gamble is considering a reduction through its downstream usage, i.e., usage by its customers.

Offsetting Water

•  Offsetting water is another major initiative companies are adopting to help become water neutral. Companies looking to offset water ought to carry out retrofits or find a partner to do them and find and fix leaks.
• Often, offsetting is done in partnerships involving organizations like a water company, the local council, businesses, or charity organizations. Some practices that are common in water offsetting projects include funding water efficiency audits and retrofits for existing buildings or businesses using water companies.
• Other practices entail donating/paying a fee to a real estate company to retrofit their units, identifying leaks and retrofitting school water infrastructure to promote water efficiency, and retrofitting water infrastructure in existing public buildings or schools.
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• The image above shows PepsiCo water neutrality initiative's strategies.
• In 2021, PepsiCo announced an ambitious water offsetting/replenishing initiative that seeks to reduce absolute water use and offset over 100% water used at company-owned and third-party sites in high-water-risk areas to the local watershed. The company’s PepsiCo's holistic "Net Water Positive" vision wants to provide safe water access to an estimated 100 million individuals by 2030.

Reusing Water

•  Reusing water is also another important practice businesses are adopting to become water neutral. This can be achieved through harvesting rainwater and recycling greywater.
• To harvest rainwater, people can use small water butts for homes and buildings. Equally, for big projects, large scale surface water harvesting techniques can also help achieve water neutrality.
• On the other hand, households can use small systems to recycle greywater from the kitchen and bathrooms. Likewise, for big projects, there exist large scale systems for commercial and mixed use sites that are ideal for harvesting more water.
•  Arvia Technologies, H2Nano, and Epic CleanTec are examples of companies leaning into the water reuse initiative and a

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